


All the Blood That I Will Bleed

by Sineala



Category: Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle | Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Angst, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Multi, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:56:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is why you don't fraternize with the enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Blood That I Will Bleed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kink Bingo 2012, the "virginity/celibacy" square. Beta by Carmarthen. The poetry mentioned is Book IV of Vergil's _Aeneid_ , lines 66-67 and 73.
> 
> This is, more or less, movieverse Marcus in characterization (at least, the way I write him), stuck into the timeline and plot of the book; he is 19 at Isca Dumnoniorum and not ~30.

It was a hot day, and the sky was a brilliant, dazzling blue. The rest of the world spread out, enticing, beyond the rows of hard benches: Clusium sprawled over rolling hills, worked here and there with vineyards, and villas dotted the countryside. Marcus swung his feet back and forth in the air, for he was still a little too short to fit on the bench, and he wished he were on the other side of the nearest fence. He wished he were anywhere, anywhere else but here. He imagined himself a soldier, the way he would be in a few years, marching in this fine weather, like his father did. Perhaps his father was marching at this very moment. Marcus squinted into the distance and tried to picture it, his father striding over the hills, coming home.

The grammaticus came to a halt in front of him, and Marcus realized his teacher was still talking, reciting the poem as he tapped out the meter of it with the ferula against his palm, long short short long short short.

" _Quid delubra iuvant? Est mollis flamma medullas / interea, et tacitum vivit sub pectore vulnus._ " 

The grammaticus finished the lines with a flourish. His dark eyes dropped to meet Marcus', and he smiled with too many teeth, the way he always did when he knew he had found a student who had not been paying attention. Marcus hoped he would escape the lesson without much of a beating.

Some of the other boys tittered.

Marcus had no idea what part of the poem it was. He hoped they were still on the bit about Dido, but maybe it was a battle now. It had sounded like something that hurt.

"Marcus," asked the grammaticus, sternly, "how does Dido feel in this section?"

So it was Dido; that much was good. He swallowed, and when he spoke his voice came out of him in a squeak. "She is-- she is in pain."

There was a long, heavy silence, and then the grammaticus nodded, but it was a grudging nod. "A good start. But why is she in pain?"

Did he not just say? "Well," Marcus ventured, feeling that certainly this was obvious, "you said why. A soft flame eats the marrows of her bones and a silent wound lives under her breast. Doesn't it hurt her?"

And then the grammaticus started to laugh. It was not the laugh one gives when an amusing thing has been said; it was a slow, sad sort of sound. The other boys were silent.

"Oh, Marcus," the grammaticus said, finally, as he let the ferula drop to his side. "She is in love with Aeneas. This is how love feels. Is the poet not eloquent?"

Love? Love was burning her to death? Who would wish for such a torture? And how would men endure it, if such a thing were true? They could not all be like Dido on her pyre. His parents loved each other, and he knew they loved him, but his mother did not talk about his father like _that_. And he loved his hound Scylax, who was warm and soft and would run with him and fetch all the sticks he threw, again and again, but that did not mean he thought either of them were on fire. It did not make any sense.

Marcus ducked his head and looked away. "It sounds unpleasant," he mumbled.

The grammaticus chuckled again, but the noise of it was like a sigh, or a sob. "You'll understand when you're older," he said, the sadness still shading his tone.

The two of them stared at each other; Marcus was sure the grammaticus was trying to tell him something, something significant, but he could not comprehend what. 

Thankfully, the class moved onto the next section, in which Dido's love for Aeneas was as a deer pierced by a deadly arrow that clung to its side, _haeret lateri letalis harundo_ , which, to Marcus' mind, sounded even worse than the first description. He tilted his head down and carved meaningless lines into the wax of his writing-tablet as the grammaticus called on Quintus to answer.

No, he did not think that he would understand. And if love was like being run through with a weapon, he did not think he ever wanted to.

* * *

When he says that he wants a guide for the hunting, Marcus expects the rest of the officers at Isca Dumnoniorum to forget, conveniently, as soon as they can manage. It is no less than they have done about so many other matters, and it irritates him each day, like the scratchiness of his wool tunic or the buzzing of flies by the store-houses. He knows he is half the age of most of them, and what of it? It is his first command. Every commander was new once, he tells himself, but that does not make it easier on him when he sees that there is fresh bath-house graffiti about him, the new centurion, or when Paulus pointedly ignores his suggestions about discipline.

So he is surprised when the request is passed along through the chatter of the fort, and he even sees the officers discussing it in a doorway.

"The commander wants a local man for the hunting," Lutorius says sourly, for he is always sour.

Drusillus nods, briskly, as if Lutorius is passing on order rather than rumor. "I know just the man for him," he says, and he does not even have to think about it first. Marcus wonders what the other centurion can possibly mean by that, how he can be so sure.

Then, of course, the quartermaster comes up to Marcus in a huff, waving some list of requisitions that is wrong here or there, and Marcus sighs and forgets all about the conversation until the day everything comes down on him. When that day happens, he will think back to this moment, and he will know that somehow it was the beginning of all things. If Lutorius had never told Drusillus, if Drusillus had picked another of the Dumnonii, perhaps Marcus would not have been slow to drag down a barbarian charioteer who meant nothing to him, and even now Marcus would still be commander of the Isca garrison.

But none can know these things except the gods, and anyway, it is likelier that the threads of his fate had been spun thus all along.

One bright morning he is sitting in the little office of the fort, half-dreaming, and a knock on the wall startles him.

"Begging your pardon, sir," Galba says.

Marcus shakes his head, disoriented. "Galba, if this is about the bribes, I thought we--"

"No, sir." Galba stands up fractionally straighter, possibly at the mention of the bribes. "There's a man from the town to see you. Dumnonii man. Says you wanted him to show you the land, for hunting."

So he did, so he did, and it is a fine day for hunting. Marcus rises and lets Galba lead him to the Praetorian Gate, where a figure stands, in the shadow of the stone arch, with a hunting-spear in his hand. One of the soldiers passes Marcus his own spear, and Marcus thinks that he ought to thank the man later, for his thoughtfulness, when the man in the gate steps forward and all other thought is driven out of Marcus' head.

There is nothing particularly special about the Dumnonii hunter, not physically. Like most of the Britons, he is tall and powerfully-built, his long russet hair falling down his back. His eyes have the sparkle of amber, set deep in a face that is not much older than Marcus' own. 

Yet somehow he is everything special to Marcus. When the Dumnonii man meets his gaze Marcus goes hot, hot all over, his skin prickling and burning; he tries to take a breath and finds he cannot. His tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. There is a great roaring, the pounding of blood in his ears. His hand on the spear trembles, as if he is cold, and surely everyone must see this. All the soldiers must see him and know that something is wrong. But no one says anything; no one has noticed. It is only Marcus. Is he ill? Is it a curse?

"I am Marcus." He says his name, as bravely as he can, so that perhaps the man will not notice how out-of-sorts he is. Only after he speaks does he realize he should have given the man a choice other than the most intimate of his names. And he does not even know if the man speaks Latin.

The hunter tilts his head a little. Now that he is in motion, Marcus' eye is drawn to him even more, the way his hair falls forward, the way the light catches his pale eyes just so. "Cradoc. You had asked for me."

The words run around and around in Marcus' head -- _asked for me asked for me for me for me_ \-- and he nods. "Shall we hunt?"

Cradoc smiles, wide and white and glad. Something in Marcus' chest clenches up and he thinks he might die from it.

* * *

He cannot say, later, whether the hunting goes well or ill. By any other man's standards, perhaps, it ought to be ill, for they caught nothing. But all Marcus can think of as he walks alone back to the garrison is that as they were making their way down a wooded hillside and he nearly tripped over a root, Cradoc grabbed for him and steadied him. He can still feel the circle of Cradoc's grip on his arm as if it had branded him, burning into his flesh, marking him. He cannot stop shaking.

That night he tosses and turns in his bed, sleepless long into the night, and the only thing he sees when he shuts his eyes is Cradoc's face, Cradoc's body, the way he walked.

He must be mad.

* * *

Cradoc comes to hunt again, and they even make conversation this time, on their way home, this time victoriously bearing a deer.

"Tell me of yourself," says Cradoc. "This is your first command?"

Marcus acknowledges that this is so.

"Your family must be very proud of you."

He nods, tightly, too ashamed to take any pleasure in the compliment. He does not tell Cradoc of the Eagle. Let him have one friend, just one friend, who thinks well of him. "They are happy for me," he lies, remembering the look of relief on his aunt and uncle's faces as he left them, left Rome. He thinks perhaps his father would be proud, if he lived still, so it is not much of a lie. "And you? What of your family?"

"My wife Guinhumara will be proud of me," he says, and he throws his head back and laughs joyously as a strange heavy lump grows in Marcus' throat. "She will enjoy the venison, and our babe is growing more each day and needs good meat. I will bring you to meet them someday," he adds, offhandedly, as inside Marcus folds and crumbles like a city besieged. "You will like them, I hope. You can practice your British."

"You are kind," Marcus forces out, through numb lips. What is the matter with him?

They walk on together in the most awful silence, and then, when they are nearly to the garrison-town, Cradoc stops and reaches out for his shoulder, dragging him around so that they face each other. "Marcus, are you well?"

Marcus nods miserably. "I am fine." It feels as though Cradoc's hand on him is the only thing holding him up.

Cradoc frowns at him, concerned. "Are you certain? I can walk with you, back to your fort--"

"No!" Marcus says, and it is almost a yell, even as his mind chants _yes yes yes_. He does not want his men to see them together. He does not want them to know, although he does not even know what it is they would know if they saw him with Cradoc. It makes no sense.

Cradoc steps back, his bright eyes now dimmed. "Very well. I will see you again," he says, and he leaves quickly, the way he does when he runs through the forest.

The trail is empty, and Marcus stands in the middle of it, shivering and leaning on his spear to keep himself upright. Cradoc is married. His wife has borne him a child.

There is nothing wrong with that, he thinks. Many men are married, and why should Cradoc not have children?

But he is married. Marcus' mind stupidly circles back on the thought. It is plain to see that he loves his wife, from the way he looked when he spoke of her, and that means Cradoc cannot-- that Marcus cannot--

He is in love with Cradoc.

His stomach twists and turns, and he vomits into the tall grasses at the trail's edge. For the life of him, he does not know which is worse -- that Cradoc is married, that Cradoc is a grown man, that Cradoc is a Briton, or that his old grammaticus was in the right all along.

* * *

Marcus knows how it is between men, of course. He is a soldier, an officer, and so certainly he has heard the chatter of the ordinary soldiers. Privately he has thought most of them would not have any words left to talk with if he forbade them from calling another man _cinaedus_ or _irrumator_.

So it is not that he is ignorant of these matters, but he finds that he cannot picture himself doing any of these things. And, oh, he tries to picture it. As soon as he finishes the evening rounds of the fort he hurries to his quarters and pulls the heavy curtain shut behind him, feeling as though he is doing something horrible and wonderful, secret and terrifying.

He has had enough practice over the last several days that his mind can conjure up Cradoc as he has just seen him, very easily. Cradoc dresses always in braccae and a long-sleeved tunic, but -- he begins to wonder -- what would he look like without it? Perhaps his skin is painted with the ink of the tribes, scarred with strange designs. It is not Roman. It ought to frighten him. How would Cradoc feel, under his fingertips? He would be strong, Marcus is certain. But he would let him -- he would let Marcus touch him, run his hands along his chest just so, and down--

Marcus' cock twitches to life, and he groans at the swell of heat, almost too much already. He will burn. The poet was right, and he will burn for this.

In his mind Cradoc smiles at him, perfect and open and trusting, with no secrets between them, and he reaches out his hand and--

Nothing. The images fade away, hazy. Oh, he knows perfectly well what it looks like, but all at once it seems ridiculous, absurd and crude, like the festival dancer waving about his huge fake phallus, shaking his hips for the crowd. Marcus cannot imagine doing something so crass, even now that his body is telling him how much he wants to. 

He only... doesn't know. He doesn't know how one goes about it, how it feels, how he would know what to do, and all at once he is angry at his own ignorance, the awkward gap where he knows nothing and everyone else knows it all. All he knows is that he _wants_ , more badly than he has wanted anything in his life. He is vulnerable. Wounded.

If he could choose, he would not have chosen this.

* * *

He meets Guinhumara. He does not think she likes him.

* * *

It does not happen for a while, but when it does, it happens all at once, in the middle of the long, lazy summer. They had met to hunt, as usual, but the hunts long ago ceased to be entirely about hunting, and at some point there began to be more conversation between them. Marcus does not think Cradoc quite thinks of him as a friend, but selfishly he is glad for the chance to speak to him more, even as every time he sees him he worries that now he will misspeak, will let his feelings show.

He is lying on his back in the glade, looking up at the light through the trees, and he thinks he might be able to be happy, like this. He hardly remembers happiness. Perhaps he was happy once, before his father was lost, before his mother died.

Cradoc sits next to him, spear across his lap, intent on the bindings of it as he leans forward, his hair falling in his face. Marcus longs to reach out and brush it back for him. Just one touch. Please. Only one, and that will be enough to sate him. He yearns for it, as a starving man.

Then Cradoc sets the spear aside and looks him full in the face. "It would not work, you know," he says, as if they have already been talking about some matter.

Marcus squints over at him. "Pardon?"

"I do not want you to think I am not fond of you," Cradoc begins, and Marcus' heart starts to race and pound at his words, "but you are a Roman."

"What of it?" Marcus asks, warily.

"I will not lie with a Roman."

At this Marcus is on his feet, ready to run, ready to flee. O immortal gods! How did he know? Has Marcus been obvious, repulsively slavering over him? Has he hidden nothing?

"What in the world are you talking about?" Marcus tries to feign ignorance, but his voice is weak in his own ears.

Cradoc only raises one eyebrow. "Do not insult either of us." He rises to his feet as well; he is taller than Marcus, but Marcus is not afraid. He is not. Cradoc would not hurt him. "Besides," he adds, "you have never lain with a man. Or a woman, I'd wager."

All at once Marcus is hot with anger. How dare Cradoc look at him and think he knows him? How dare he judge him unworthy only because of what he has not done, and hold himself back because of things Marcus cannot change about himself? Who is Cradoc, to say whether Marcus can do this? He is not so much older; he has no right to put on airs as if he knows all there is to know.

"I know what I want," Marcus says, boldly, tilting his head up to meet Cradoc's gaze. Or rather, he knows who he wants, and is that not the same thing?

Cradoc laughs and shakes his head. "You don't."

Surely he can judge Cradoc just as much. "And what about your wife?" he counters.

"It is different among the tribes," comes the easy reply. "She understands. It is not forbidden among my people, none of it."

Marcus keeps his eyes locked with Cradoc's. "You think Romans do not do these things? You think a Roman man has never looked upon another man with desire? You think _I_ have not?"

Cradoc's thin lips part in the tiniest of smiles, and Marcus wonders what it would be like to kiss him. The very thought is heady, dizzying. "I think," Cradoc whispers, "that I could take you apart with a touch, and you do not know to fear me for it, little eagle."

He steps forward, padding softly across the leaves, until they are so close that Marcus thinks he can feel the heat of his body. Cradoc holds out two fingers, a slow, purposeful gesture, and he brings his hand up to Marcus' throat. He does not touch him, but pushes his fingers insistently upward until Marcus is forced to tilt his head back. Cradoc's fingers trace over the skin of his throat, where it is tender and not yet scarred by a soldier's helmet-ties.

Marcus trembles. It is not even a caress, what Cradoc is doing, for he is not even touching him. There is only the barest suggestion of pressure. But he can feel it, feel everything. He is aware of all of his body, focusing down into that one point, and he melts into it. He is gone, he is already gone.

"Or perhaps I don't even have to touch you." Cradoc's mouth quirks, and he drops his hand. Marcus feels the loss of it as a blow. "I will not take anything from a man who does not understand what he is offering."

It would hardly be taking, not if he gives himself willingly. And he would, oh, he would.

"Of course I understand," says Marcus, with all the determination he has. "My body."

But Cradoc is once again shaking his head and stepping back. "You understand nothing." His words are quiet. "Otherwise you would not offer it. A gift has a way of binding the giver and the recipient, whether they will it or no."

"I want--"

The laugh this time is unkind. "You don't. I will be your companion, Marcus, and that I will be gladly. And you will thank your gods later that we were never more to each other."

He picks up his spear and is gone.

* * *

Cradoc keeps to his word, Marcus thinks, wretchedly, and that is the only good thing that can be said for that. He does come back. But he does not speak about that day in the glade. It is as if it never happened.

Marcus is in no danger of forgetting. The subject occupies his fevered imagination, night after night, and each time he wonders what he could have said, what he could have done differently, to make Cradoc take him seriously, to let him do what he desires.

Each time he sees Cradoc, Cradoc only smiles pleasantly at him, but Marcus remembers. He does not think a man cannot die from longing, but he almost wishes he could.

* * *

So Marcus does not speak of it either, not for the rest of the summer. He says nothing when he goes to Cradoc's home in the autumn, meets his wife again, sees him tending to his team of ponies. Marcus still says nothing eight days later, when Cradoc returns from Durinum and they compete against each other as charioteers, and he tries to let the joy of the race fill him, but it is not enough. It is not all that he wants from him.

He walks home with his new-won spear even as he remembers the one Cradoc held back, its heron-feathers bright. It is a thing fit for war, and he wonders what else they are not speaking of, between them.

* * *

The next day Marcus is at the fort, surrounded by papyri and tablets and all manner of useless little details, but his eye keeps being drawn back to the spear, now resting against the wall of the office. Then he catches sight of a familiar figure standing in the doorway, and he is stunned into silence.

Cradoc is here. Cradoc has never been to the fort except as far as the gate, that first day, and here he stands, in Marcus' office. He is unarmed.

His face is grave. "Walk with me," he says. The words are as an order, and Marcus is out of his seat before he can think of whether he should obey.

Side by side, they go down into the garrison-town, until they are at the hut where Cradoc lives with his family. This time, when he pushes past the leather apron that covers the door, he finds that the inside of the hut is silent and empty.

"Guinhumara has gone to see her sister for the day." Cradoc's voice is still oddly harsh. "She has taken our son with her."

Marcus looks around the place and he hopes that all the surprise he feels does not show on his face. "And you have brought me here."

"I have," says Cradoc, and for an instant he looks old, scarred, worn. "I wished to bid you farewell."

Farewell? He cannot hide the shock this time, he knows; it is a bolt of lightning from the heavens. Is Cradoc leaving? What is going on?

Marcus is dimly aware that his mouth is hanging open. "Why?" he manages, finally. "Where are you going?"

But this is not the question that Cradoc answers. "I do not think we will meet again." His face is twisted, his beautiful eyes cold with sadness. "It is in my heart that you should know I thought well of you, as a man. I want you to remember that."

He cannot think. If he could think of words, he cannot speak them. His mouth is dry, and the world spins and turns around him. He staggers, ending up with his back braced against the wall for balance, all the while with Cradoc watching him, so very calmly. How can he stand there, unaffected? Does Marcus mean so little to him?

"Is this about--" he can hardly bring himself to say it-- "that day, in the glade?" Perhaps Cradoc wishes to be rid of him for it, and this is the way he has chosen to tell him about it.

A short bark of laughter. "No."

He can't leave. He cannot leave, not with the weight of this, unsaid, hanging between them. If they are never to meet again, they cannot pretend it did not happen. If he leaves, Marcus will never know, Marcus will wonder for the rest of his life what it could have been like, and it will eat away at him, it will bleed him dry.

He straightens up and steps forward, challenging. "Are you so afraid of what happened that day?"

"Of all the things, Marcus," Cradoc begins, with an incredulous look on his face, "this is not the time for that--"

"There is no other time. This is all the time there is." There is nothing in Marcus now except this desire, mixed with a perfect certainty. "I think you are afraid."

Cradoc's face is flushed now; his eyes are bright. "You know nothing."

Marcus smiles and steps forward. "I told you. I know what I want." He has seen dancing-girls walk like this, smile thus, and he knows the effect it has. "I know you want me."

"You tempt me," Cradoc murmurs. "You do not know how much you tempt me. There are so many things I could show you." He smiles back, but he does not move, still standing in the middle of the room. 

"Then show me," Marcus tries, desperately. "All these things I do not know. Show me them."

Cradoc sighs. "It transforms you, Marcus. It rips you apart and puts you back together, and all the spaces inside you where you have been waiting for it, dreaming of it -- in those spaces there I will be. I could stand behind you now; I could kiss the back of your neck. You have never felt that before. You will not know how it feels, until that moment. And a year from now, or five, or ten, when your lover stands there and does the same thing, you will think _Cradoc did that to me_. No matter how much you love another, or grow to hate me, you will always have my name there, deep in your bones. And I think, soon, you will not want that name to be mine."

But he has not said no, and he is staring at Marcus like a man who wants a thing but does not think he can have it. His lips are parted, just a little, and his eyes are dark with lust. For him.

"I could not hate you, I could not!" Marcus insists, with all the passion in him. "And if this is the last time we meet, I want to know. I want it to be you."

Cradoc steps closer. His arms go around Marcus and it is perfect, it is wonderful, it is already better than he could ever have imagined.

"Remember this." Their mouths are inches apart. "When you think of this, remember that you asked for it."

Marcus closes his eyes, and Cradoc kisses him.

* * *

The Dumnonii attack the fort the next day.

The chariot bears down on him. Cradoc is its driver.

He ought to have known.

Name of Light, he ought to have known.

Their time has run out. He leaps for Cradoc, his arms around his waist, catching him, dragging him down, tangling both of them in the reins.

They fall together.

* * *

A few of the soldiers who find Marcus will tell him, later, that they hardly thought anyone could be alive in the wreckage. They will tell him that they found the charioteer dead in his arms, as if in an embrace. Just another barbarian, they will say, and they will congratulate Marcus on his skill, his courage. They will not know Cradoc's name.

Marcus will lie in his pallet and weep. When the surgeon comes, he will say there is nothing wrong. He will say there is no pain.

* * *

He will lose his commission. He will gain an uncle.

In Calleva, he will look across the sands of the arena on a winter day and see a Briton, a fighter, strong and proud, with such a familiar bearing that his breath will be stolen from him for an instant, his heart stopped in his chest. He will meet an amber-eyed girl with a fierce and ready smile.

He will gain an Eagle, and he will lose it.

He will gain the love of his friends, both of them, pure and trusting in a way Cradoc never could have been. It will be sweet for him, a good life.

One day the three of them will be out mending the wall by the paddock, and Esca will touch his arm to get his attention. All at once the feel of his hand, the look of the light, the smell of the air will make Marcus remember a different day, a hunt in the forests, the day he met Cradoc. The first time.

It will not feel the same. It could never feel the same again. The poet's raging fires will have subsided now, settled to embers. But they will last longer, and they will bring the light.

Cottia will frown at him.

"It is nothing," Marcus will say. "A memory."


End file.
